


Inseparable

by FreckledSkittles



Series: ReiBert Week 2015 [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Reibert Week, Reibert Week 2015, i didn't know what to do with this one so i just made a joke of it, inseparable, scientist nerds, that's it that's the story, vegetarian!Bertolt, vegetarian!Reiner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4509573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreckledSkittles/pseuds/FreckledSkittles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, accidents happen at work. And sometimes, those accidents are unavoidable.</p>
<p>(Or, the one where Reiner and Bertolt are attached at the hip—literally.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inseparable

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Day 2 of ReiBert Week, which is two days ago, but I'm posting it now because of connectivity issues. So.

_Maria Wall Laboratory_   
_Room 845_

“Armin, wait, don’t press that butt—”

There was the zapping of electricity, a sharp pain in his side, and then a sudden pull that sent him crashing against the person beside him. Their temples crashed into each other, and their hip bones collided in a sharp sizzle of pain that caused both of them to cry out. Bertolt grabbed the other’s shoulder for leverage, but they were already tumbling down, crippled by the sharp twinges that stung their sides. A bright light that had been consistent since the buzzing started shone in his eyes and prevented him from seeing, much less keeping his eyes open.

And as quickly as it had started, it was over, Bertolt on the left, lying on his back, and his companion on the right in the same predicament. He panted quietly, the pain in his right hip stronger than before, and he gritted his teeth to prevent a scream from ripping out of his throat. His fists clenched beneath him into tight balls that would have pounded against the ground if it weren’t for his slip into unconsciousness and the lone voice of his partner speaking beside him.

“…you said butt.”

x-x-x

_Maria Wall Laboratory_   
_ Control room _

“I’m so sorry, guys, I really am—”

“Armin, please. Just stop talking.”

Bertolt had applied for a job three years ago at the Wall Laboratory of Advanced Sciences and Research, after interning and making large steps in the study of changing human genetics and increasing size, body weight, and vulnerability. He was one of the youngest in the labs, one of twelve given a job, and struggled to gain praise and attention for what he did amongst the experienced and skilled. Reiner Braun, the same man who sat beside him and whose hip had fused with his, had managed to do so successfully, and was even given a promotion for his work. His constant teasing didn’t do any good either, and both of their competitive natures came alive when they were transferred to perform more physical testing on body parts from deceased donors.

Now, in the middle of changing tests and readjusting certain settings that might have been the source of their failures, unbeknownst to their coworkers, Bertolt and Reiner were caught in the middle of a small test to make sure everything was working before the next test sample was brought in. With the two in the same room, and the settings adjusted to what they were, the two were fused together at the hip, side by side, and no amount of pulling would separate them. They had to put an arm behind the other male’s back to give themselves some room.

A gentle prod at his side, where the two were connected, sent a flinch in both and a frown from Bertolt. Eren scowled, his gloved hands hovering above the spot he had touched. “I’m trying to check for any bone fusions to see if we can cut through it,” he stated.

“Why can’t you just do an x-ray?” Bertolt suggested, his tone sharp and snapping. He wasn’t usually rude to his coworkers, and kept to himself for the most part. But now that he was attached to the last person he wanted to even speak to, he wanted out.

Eren, however, was the last person with a temper that anyone would want to face. “Jesus fuck, I’m just trying to help you guys out!”

“Poking at it won’t do us any good.”

“If you share the same hip bone, it’ll be difficult to separate you, “Mikasa stated coldly from the other side of the room. She had been fiddling with switches and settings ever since he had woken up, probably even before. “He’s only trying to help.”

“Well he’s doing a poor job at it.”

“I think he’s doing great,” Reiner stated, and gave a thumbs-up to Eren. “Keep it up, man.” When Bertolt turned his head to glower at him for his comment, he was given a bright smile that was nothing short of shit-eating.

Annie, who had been working across the hall on a similar experiment, walked into the room, followed by a nervous Armin. The blonde female raised an eyebrow at the sight, and a small, barely recognizable smirk appeared on her lips. For a professional and more stoic coworker, it was a rare and teasing sight. She and Bertolt had gotten along fine, but she had a tendency to butt heads with him more than he did with Reiner. “Karma really is a bitch, huh?” She asked, sauntering over to the table. “Jaeger, what’s the situation?”

“We were going through our daily quota for tests, and we changed some settings in the controls to do it correctly, but…,” Eren shrugged and looked away, almost embarrassed, “we didn’t see either of them in the chamber until it cleared up.”

“Hm. Are their bones are fused together?”

“We don’t know.” Teal eyes shifted over to emerald with a biting yet constrained fury. “Haven’t gotten there yet.”

“It doesn’t take a few pokes at my hip to see that we’re connected,” Bertolt sneered with an eyeroll.

“Actually, it’s our hip now,” Reiner stated, matter-of-fact and in a low voice, as if talking would cause another fight.

“Have you tried using the same settings to redo this?” Annie suggested, tapping her finger against their shared side.

The sound of keys clacking and switches whirring stopped when Mikasa paused and gazed at her over her shoulder. “We have other experiments to try out,” she spoke through gritted teeth.

“Reset it to the setting you had earlier.”

“I _can’t_. I’ve already prepared for the next test.”

“Then prepare another lab to do it in.”

“We’re busy.”

Annie was behind her in the blink of an eye and grabbed the clipboard out of Mikasa’s reach. “Springer’s team can help you. Go to their lab and get it ready now.”

Mikasa glared up at her, but didn’t say anything else in protest. Annie, like Reiner, had taken a spot that had been wanted by both women and sparked an even stronger rivalry between them. Without another word, the dark-haired female was out the door and heading to another wing of the facility.

The blonde turned to the other two. “Eren, Armin, I need you two to continue working here until Springer’s team is ready. You can escort these two idiots,” she gestured to the conjoined Bertolt and Reiner, patting the former on the head as she passed by, “when they give the call.”

“And what are we going to do?” Bertolt wondered. “We’re sorta the main show of this.”

“Stay there and look pretty.”

“What if I have to take a piss?” Reiner called out.

“Hold it. If you need me, don’t call me.” And with another teasing smirk, she was out the door. As soon as she was gone, Bertolt scooted forward as best he could before he was held back by the confused man attached to his side. The dark-haired male glanced at him over his shoulder and nodded forward. “Come on, we’re going.”

“What are you gonna do, wiggle your way towards the exit and scare half the planet to death?” Eren snorted.

“I’m going to Smith to see if he can do anything to help.”

“Can we get lunch first?” Reiner wondered as he moved forward, simultaneous with Bertolt. “I’m actually starving.” Because of the three-inch height difference, their bodies, they noticed when they touched ground, were slightly slanted to make up for the difference, with Reiner being pulled up more and Bertolt being pulled down.

“Erwin can’t do anything for you,” Armin stated. His voice was still shaky, but it was more composed as he reviewed the control panel. “Zacharius is your best bet.”

“Zacharius can’t do shit with this sort of thing,” Eren argued. “Try Levi—”

“No, Levi’s working with his team, and they’d humiliate them before help them.”

Bertolt rolled his eyes at the banter and turned to Reiner. “Have you ever done a three-legged race before?”

“There was this one time—”

“Just answer the question.”

“Only on TV.”

“That makes no sense.” This was going to be more difficult than he thought; the taller male let out a long sigh. “Okay, so…when I move my left leg, you move your right. And then you move your left when I move my right.”

“How come I can’t move my left when you move your right?”

“It doesn’t matter when you move it, just…” Bertolt shut his eyes, pinching his fingers against his temple. “Just move the opposite of my leg when I move, okay?”

“Sure.”

The first try had been a success for them, with Bertolt moving his left and Reiner his right. But when they attempted to use their inner legs, the shorter of the duo took a smaller step, causing them to stumble and knock into each other once again.

Bertolt twisted around to face him as best he could; "Couldn't you have done a better job at trying to match my steps?"

"You were the one who stepped too far ahead!" Reiner protested, and before the taller could speak, the blond was clutching Bertolt's waist and pulling him closer to him. There was a different type of glint in his eyes, one that was confident in what he was doing and wasn't going to stand for any more delays.

A high-pitched yelp jumped out of his throat when Reiner grasped onto him and practically dragged him out of the control room. They turned down the hallway to the elevator, and to the fourth floor. The Wall Laboratory had three different buildings—Maria, Rose, and Sina—all with eight floors and a large population of workers. Because they were on the eighth floor, and to avoid crowding the first floor, their cafeteria was on the fourth floor.

“You can let go of me now,” Bertolt stated in a low voice, one hand grasping onto Reiner’s wrist. The shorter glanced over at him, partially confused but a part of him also clear enough to release the dark-haired male. He straightened up his clothes and jacket once he was back on his feet; he was still frustrated at the situation, but there was something telling him to ease up on his irritation. Reiner had done nothing to bring them to this point, and was most likely just as frustrated, even if he didn’t voice it. It wouldn’t help anyone to focus his anger on him.

The elevator came to a halt with a ding, and the two stumbled out onto the linoleum. A few eyes glanced over at them, causing Bertolt’s face to flush. He was never one who wished for the public eye to be on him, and being attached to his superior wasn’t helping. He forced himself to focus on moving, and to not make any assumptions about the callused hand that was pressed flat against his lower back. It was there to steady Reiner’s wobbly movements, and nothing more.

“What do you want to have for lunch?” Reiner asked once they got closer to those waiting in line.

“I’m not too sure,” Bertolt replied, honest yet hesitant. It wasn’t common for him to go downstairs to the cafeteria for lunch, and if he did, it was with people who had decided his lunches in the rec room on their floor were getting old.

“Well, what do you usually get?”

“…a tofurkey and cheese sandwich with mustard on rye?”

The blond raised an eyebrow at that, clearly not grasping the statement. His eyes jumped back to the menu. “Where do you see that?”

Did he really not understand? “I don’t eat lunch here.”

“You eat downstairs?” His eyes widened, as if he had just found a lost treasure. “How do you get there?”

“I eat upstairs.”

The sparkle, along with the excitement from his initial question, vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “You eat upstairs for lunch?”

“Yeah, regularly. You’re just now finding out?”

“…I guess so.”

“Well, it’s not anything to worry about. I really don’t mind—”

“Shut up.” Reiner had once again put his attention on the menus hanging above the line, and then he headed towards a smaller wait, dragging the taller along with him. “The tofurkey is good here. I’ve never had it myself, but I know people who have.”

Bertolt paused, shifting on his feet to give himself some space. “You’ve tried tofurkey before?”

“Yeah, duh.”

“So you’re a vegetarian?”

“Hold on—can I have the tofurkey sub on rye and a chicken caesar salad, but with tofu instead of chicken? Bert, what do you want to drink?”

The nickname, and the contents of their order, startled Bertolt and caused him to stumble over his drink request. The duo shuffled over to the counter, sidestepping without stepping on the other male’s feet, and Reiner pulled out his wallet. “I can pay for m—”

“No.” The shorter handed the cashier a card and winked at his coworker. “You just stand there and look pretty, alright?”

Bertolt frowned past the darker blush that seared his face yet did as requested. First the nickname, and now the compliment? If it could even be called that, at least. Reiner was certainly not prone to flirting, man or woman, but he had hardly ever made a move towards him. Or maybe he had, and he had just been too blinded by his fury to notice.

A few minutes later, their meals were ready, one carrying the trays and the other with the drinks. Reiner guided them to a rectangular table that was open, plopping their food on the table and sliding the sandwich over. “As they say in French, ‘bone appetite’!”

“I think it’s ‘bon appetit’,” Bertolt corrected with a slight smile on his face, taking a taste test of the tofurkey before going for his sandwich. He was right: it wasn’t absolutely terrible.

“Close enough. Kirschtein would have ripped me a new one, ha!”

The two were quiet as they ate, distracted by their hunger, but Bertolt set his sandwich down and twisted his upper body as best he could to look at Reiner. “So, you’re a vegetarian?”

“You can say that, yeah,” Reiner shrugged. “I grew up as one. My parents were raging hippies who listened to too much Grateful Dead and smoked too much grass, if you know what I mean. They avoided meat like it was the plague.”

“Not even for you?”

“I mean, I had some once at a birthday party, and I got food poisoning, so it helped them. Plus, I didn’t really eat it before then, unless it was something special.”

Bertolt scoffed at that, shaking his head. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Almost as unbelievable as the fact that you’ve been having lunch upstairs by yourself for three years?” He shuffled out of his white coat, folded it up and set it on the bench space beside him. “Can’t be too bad.”

The taller gritted his teeth, nearly tearing his sandwich in two. “Hmph. Must be different from your crowded tables, huh?”

Reiner scoffed past a mouthful of salad, and finished chewing before he spoke. “I eat by myself, actually. If I eat with coworkers or people I’m friendly with, I’ll never eat.”

His eyes shifted over to the salad bowl. “You don’t seem to be doing too bad right now.”

He paused, staring at the food on his fork before he set said utensil down and connected hazel to emerald. That same shine from before, the hazel hitting the light just right, had returned, gentle and genuine. “Because I feel differently for you.”

Bertolt’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest, and his stomach churned uneasily. Was that a bad or good thing? Did it mean what he thought it meant? Or was Reiner just pulling a leg, and this was just another joke?

Reiner fully rotated (or as much as he could) to take Bertolt’s hand in his. The contrast in them was large, he noticed; Reiner’s hands were large and firm, the palms coarse against his, which were soft and smooth. The contact made his heart do another leap, and he could have sworn his breath halted in his throat. “I suck at this word thing. But did you ever notice there was something different about the way I treated you?”

“N-no…” He internally cursed his nervous stammer, and tried to calm down his heartbeat before it burst. “I mean, aside from the constant teasing and competition, I-I didn’t really see one… Wh-why? Was there?”

A soft chuckle fell from his lips, thin and tempting; “Would I have mentioned it if there wasn’t? I always thought you were in my ballpark—wait, scratch that, that sounds dumb. Uhh—I didn’t know if you were played for the same team…that’s a discrete way to ask if someone’s gay, right?”

This time, it was Bertolt’s turn to laugh, a loud sound that was unusual to be heard from him. If he had known that Reiner had felt something for him past the competitiveness they had harvested, he wouldn’t have said half the things he said in the years of their rivalry. “I play for the same team, yes.”

Reiner’s eyebrows raised in shock, but he relaxed and laughed at the response. “That’s great! Fantastic! I mean, I root for both teams, but…I don’t know. You were just different.”

“Because I didn’t deal with your bullshit?”

“Yeah—but if someone else did the same thing as me, you wouldn’t say anything to them.”

“That doesn’t mean I was okay with it.”

“I know; just saying. You are very easy to figure out.”

“Pff—if I was so easy, how come it took you so long to find out I’m gay?”

Reiner’s face whitened, but before he could answer, his phone from within his lab jacket buzzed to life against the seat, startling them both and causing their attention to drift. After struggling to find said object, he retrieved it from its shrouded spot and answered. “Jaeger, hey! Whoa, no yelling—we didn’t run away. Are they ready?” Bertolt started to pack up their garbage, waiting for the approval to move. “Alright, we’ll be right over.” He hung up and smiled, pocketing his phone in his pants and throwing his jacket on. “They’re ready for us.”

“Good. I don’t think I could have taken another minute being attached to you.”

“Aww, come on, it wasn’t that bad! It was only a few hours.”

The two had started to move in separate directions, Bertolt to the left and Reiner to the right, before they were slammed back down against their seats and bonked their heads together. Both grasped their temples in pain, hissing at the ringing that entered afterwards.

“Here, hold on—”

“Maybe we should slide—”

“Yeah, sliding’s good—ow, that’s my foot.”

“Shit, sorry— _I’m not out yet_ —thanks.”

Reiner bit back a laugh, biting his lip as the two stumbled to the garbage cans. “Nice fall over there. Did you see winter?”

“That wasn’t even funny,” Bertolt rolled his eyes, though his smile said otherwise, as the duo headed for the elevator.. “You’re a dork.”

“I’ve been told. I’m hilarious, actually.”

“Sure, sure. How could I have not known?”

They entered the elevator, still teasing one another with grins and pokes. By the time they reached the first floor, however, the two were in a much closer proximity than they had been earlier, their noses nearly touching and their breaths shared in the small space they had.

“Did Eren say when we had to be there?” Bertolt wondered quietly. If it weren’t for the connection of their hips, he would have been pressing himself against the shorter, tugging at blond hair that stuck up and refused to be smoothed down.

“He never gave a time, no,” Reiner admitted, eyes half-lidded and a smirk on his face. His left hand had snuck behind the taller and caressed his backside, and then his free hip, gently pressing them closer together. “We could always say we were still eating.”

“I would like that.”

They walked out of the elevator, Reiner leading them forward. “There’s a special bathroom for higher-ups that we could go to.”

“When nature calls.”

“Exactly.”

“We could get caught.”

“We could, yeah. But then again,” Reiner, after checking with a jiggle of the doorknob that the bathroom was available, pulled them both inside and pressed Bertolt against the door, “we’re inseparable.”

Even if their positions were awkward, the dark-haired male locked the door and tugged him closer. “Is there any way we can stay like that, even after Springer’s team finishes up?”

“Oh Bertolt.” Reiner grinned, soft and sure, “I thought you’d never ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> *For those who don't know, tofurkey is basically tofu and other such veggie products that is used in the place of turkey. I'm not a vegetarian, but my sister is, and has said that tofurkey is either a hit or miss with people. For Bert, it's a hit; but for Reiner, it's a miss.


End file.
